WASHINGTON — Ten months after the Obama administration began pressing lenders to do more to prevent foreclosures, many struggling homeowners are holding up their end of the bargain but still find themselves rejected, and some even are having their homes sold out from under them without notice.

These borrowers, rich and poor, completed trial modifications of their distressed mortgage, and made all the payments, only to learn, often indirectly, that they won't get help after all.

How many is hard to tell. Lenders participating in the administration's Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, still don't provide the government with information about who's rejected and why.

To date, more than 759,000 trial loan modifications have been started, but just 31,382 have been converted to permanent new loans.

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That averages out to 4 percent, far below the 75 percent conversion rate President Barack Obama has said he seeks.

In the fine print of the form homeowners fill out to apply for Obama's program, which lowers monthly payments for three months while the lender decides whether to provide permanent relief, borrowers must waive important notification rights.

This clause allows banks to reject borrowers without any written notification and move straight to auctioning off their homes without any warning.

That's what happened to Evangelina Flores, the owner of a modest 902 square-foot home in Fontana. She completed a three-month trial modification, and made the last of the agreed upon monthly payments of $1,134.60 on Nov. 1. Her lawyer said that in late November, Central Mortgage Co. told her that it would void her adjustable-rate mortgage, which had risen to a monthly sum above $2,000, and replace it with a fixed-rate mortgage.

"The information they had given us is that she had qualified and that she would be getting her notice of modification in the first week of December," said George Bosch, the legal administrator for the law firm of Edward Lopez and Rick Gaxiola, which is handling Flores' case for free.

Flores, 58, a self-employed child care worker, wired her December payment to Central Mortgage Co. on Nov. 30, thinking that her prayers had been answered. A day later, there was a loud, aggressive knock on her door.

Thinking a relative was playing a prank, she opened her front door to find two strangers handing her an eviction notice.

"They arrived real demanding, saying that they were the owners," recalled Flores. "I have high blood pressure, and I felt awful."

Court documents show that her house had been sold that very morning to a recently created company, Shark Investments. The men told Flores she had to be out within three days. The eviction notice had a scribbled signature, and under the signature was the name of attorney John Bouzane.

A representative in his office denied Bouzane's law firm was involved in Flores' eviction, and said the eviction notice was obtained from Bouzane's Web site, www.fastevictionservice.com.

Why would a lawyer provide for free a document that gives the impression his law firm is behind an eviction?

"We hope to get the eviction business," said the woman, who didn't identify herself.

Flores bought her home in 2006 for $352,000. Records show that it has a current fair-market value of $99,000. The new owner bought it for $78,000 at an auction Flores didn't even know about.

"I had my dream, but now I feel awful," said Flores, who remains in the house while her lawyers fight her eviction. "I still can't believe it."

How could Flores go so quickly from getting government help to having her home owned by Shark Investment? The answer is in the fine print of standard HAMP documents.

The Aug. 25 cover letter from Central Mortgage Co., the servicer that collects Flores' mortgage payments, offered Flores a trial modification with this comforting language: "If you do not qualify for a loan modification, we will work with you to explore other options available to help you keep your home or ease your transition into a new home."

A glance past CMC's hopeful promise finds a different story in the fine print of the HAMP document, which contains standardized language drafted by the Obama Treasury Department and is used uniformly by lenders.

The document warns that foreclosure "may be immediately resumed from the point at which it was suspended if this plan terminates, and no new notice of default, notice of intent to accelerate, notice of acceleration, or similar notice will be necessary to continue the foreclosure action, all rights to such notices being hereby waived to the extent permitted by applicable law."

This means that even when a borrower makes all the trial payments, a lender can put the house up for auction if it decides that the homeowner doesn't qualify — assuming that foreclosure proceedings had been started before the trial period — without telling the homeowner.

Until now, lenders haven't even had to notify borrowers in writing that they'd been rejected for permanent modifications.

In January, 11 months after Obama's plan was announced, homeowners will begin receiving written rejection notices, and the Treasury Department finally will begin receiving data on rejection rates and reasons for rejections.

"Foreclosure actions may not be initiated or restarted until the borrower has failed the trial period and the borrower has been considered and found ineligible for other available foreclosure prevention options," said Meg Reilly, a Treasury spokeswoman. "Servicers who continue with foreclosure sales are considered noncompliant."

CMC officials declined to comment and hung up when they learned that a reporter was listening in with permission from Flores' legal team. Arvest officials also declined comment.